The curtains are drawn. Some light comes through, casting a small glow on the top left of the air conditioner. It’s daytime. The wall is an undecorated slab of beige. That is the American room.

The American Room is a terrific article in which Paul Ford presents an analysis of US homes and suburbs starting from a study of the rooms found in the background of so many YouTube videos.

I can’t quite place it but I once heard someone claiming that one of the world’s biggest libraries of pornographic film belonged to this US university’s Furniture Design department, allegedly because porn would be a reliable historical record of cheap furniture — a bit like this blog [probably sued out of existence by IKEA’s lawyers hence the Buzzfeed link]. (I tried to search for the library but I found it ungoogleable.)